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Curious
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Nostalgic
‘Dont Look Back’
Ever since seeing A Complete Unknown at my local multiplex in early 2025, I’ve found myself on a serious Bob Dylan jag. Inspired by Decider contributor Jordan Hoffman’s excellent essay on ACU companion pieces for the Dylan-curious, I fired up Dont Look Back (no apostrophe!), the 1967 documentary by D.A. Pennebaker that mostly focuses in on Dylan’s raucous tour of England in the spring of 1965. Filming took place in the weeks leading up to the storied moment when Dylan infamously “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival later that summer, and largely depicts the then 24-year-old Dylan acting cocksure and prickly in the face of vast criticism by the infamously invasive British music press. It wasn’t all sour times, though; this fly-on-the-wall style doc also captures him playfully trashing hotel rooms, ignoring Joan Baez’s pleas for attention, putting British folkie Donovan in his place, and generally melting faces all across Dear Old Blighty with just his guitar and harmonica. It’s also the genesis of the footage you’ve almost certainly seen of Dylan tossing cue cards onto the ground while “Subterranean Homesick Blues” blares (and Beat poet king Allen Ginsberg looks on), which is credited in some circles as being the first ever music video.
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